Cendrillon
by simplyprologue
Summary: "So tell me, Cinderella," he said, after they'd kissed and kissed and kissed. (Post-Election Night pt II, canon compliant)


**A/N: **This plot bunny's been niggling at me for awhile, and now that I'm home for break I've finally had the time to write it. It's based on the original french telling of Cinderella, called_ Cendrillon_, which was written by Charles Perrault in 1697 and was turned into an opera by Pauline Viardot in 1910. Post S2, but covers pre-series events as well, rather than the Grimm or Disney telling of it.

* * *

_Il était jadis un Prince__  
qui voulait se marier,__  
Mais l'amour, à tire-d'aile,_  
_en le voyant s'envolait!_

There was once a Prince  
who wanted to be married,  
but love, took one look,  
and it flew away!

—_Cendrillon_, Pauline Viardot

* * *

**i.**

The woman in black Louboutins took flight. The well-oiled hinges on the front door to the apartment worked silently in the absence of a person inclined to keep it still—it did not slam behind her, nor gently shut, but instead was left open, lingering, neither opening for a lover to slip through nor closing to signal the denouement of an affair gone quickly, rapidly, sour.

The man in the apartment did not enter the doorway, or even venture anywhere near the door, her cries too loud to bear hearing even after her confession; no shadow crossed the opening.

She stayed, lingered, watching for one: his. He had not told her to leave, but merely collapsed into himself, carding his hands through his hair.

In a moment she was blinded by tears, great hiccupping sobs, and so she tripped, fell to her knees, and pushed herself up again. Not until she reached the open elevator doors did she realize that one shoe was left behind, tipped onto its side not far from the open apartment door.

She could bring herself to go back.

Crying harder, she watched the doors slide shut.

* * *

**ii. **

The man, in time, lifted his head from his hands and lifted his body from the couch, and went to close the door, one more thing that the woman had left half-finished, undone.

The black spot against the corporate hallway carpet caught his eye.

She lost her shoe.

For a moment, a stunned and forlorn specter of affection rose high in his chest, enough to choke the air from his resignation, his resolution, and he picked up the abandoned red-soled shoe. Half a second of hesitation, and he followed her, rushing down twelve flights of stairs. She was only five minutes ahead and it was pouring in New York City, she would have to fight for a cab, he could—

He reached the front doors of his building in time to watch the crying woman, soaked with rain, get into a taxi and drive out of his life.

His hand fell to hold the shoe loosely at his side, before he curled his fingernails into the black leather, anger rising up to replace adrenaline and that innominate impulse that had pushed him into the front lobby. It was better that way, he thought. Anger was better.

_Good riddance. _

* * *

**iii. **

She tripped down the front stoop, the heel on her remaining shoe snapping, sending her reeling. The doorman ran out to the sidewalk, offering her his hand, and she scrambled to her feet, the words _thank you, I'm sorry, thank you _rushing from her mouth like the rain beating down on them both. She had to yell, eyes wide and frantic, to make them heard.

She'd broken it all, least of all her favorite pair of shoes.

She cried all the way home, and then all the way to Atlanta. And then the woman in the black Louboutins picked herself up, brushed herself off, and sent herself away. To a faraway place where she was expected to wear combat boots and where sweat lacquered her hair to her forehead and she could never forget the man she left behind with the clock ticking close to midnight.

It had shattered like glass under her heel; he would not be coming after her.

Why would he?

* * *

**iv. **

He considered throwing it away. And then maybe, during a period where he felt like being a good guy again, having it couriered to her, but then remembered she had gone to Atlanta.

And later regretted it, when she fled even further.

He never quite let her go, using contacts and friends to keep track of her, even when he deleted her voicemails without consideration and banished her emails into a hidden file as soon as they entered his inbox. He could not bear to hear her voice, her explanations, her pleading cries, but he also could not bear the thought that she was unwell, unsafe, tucked into a fragile and tumultuous corner of the world.

When the thousands of miles between them made him sick to his stomach, he would take the shoe out of its hiding place in the back of his closet, set it on the ledge of the balcony of his new apartment, and sit well into the night while nicotine calmed the shaking in his hands.

Smoke would curl into the blue-painted sky and ambient lights of the kingdom she had conceded to him in the break up, Van Morrison singing about homecomings. And he would remember again and again about how his home took flight one night and all she had left him was a size seven and a half Louboutin and a broken heart.

Despite his anger, he found that the specter of his affection for her never quite died.

* * *

**v.**

She was stabbed.

His hands didn't stop shaking all night; he almost packed up the shoe and went to her. Almost, except his heart was made of glass and he was sharpened, jagged now. An angry man in love, and glass hearts only ever made everything bleed. Glass hearts made from drunk fathers and cheating lovers, betrayal after betrayal on an ever-turning wheel.

Anger was a strong enough bond to wend back together broken fragments, but only love could rebuild dust into glass and ferment it into diamond.

He wasn't ready to give chase, to give her anything at all.

He put the shoe away in the morning and went to work.

* * *

**vi. **

Another year passed. The woman came home and slipped on a new pair of red-soled shoes, swept back into his life, and, quite possibly, back into her own.

* * *

**vii.**

Three more years passed until he was ready to chase her, until he realized he couldn't let her walk out of his life again; she had to say yes three times before he stopped proposing.

After New Year's she sublet her apartment and moved in with him, the war outside pressing in on their private lives and she just wanted to hide away in him, with him, and he happily obliged, making room for her in his closet and his dresser and wherever else she'd like.

She unpacked her clothes on a lazy Saturday, lining up her shoes on the closet rack, black and nude and grey and navy, all with red leather soles, and counted one extra. Rummaging through plastic bins on the floor of the closet, for the missing half of the pair, it took her a few minutes before she slowly reached to take the black Louboutin in her hand. Staring at it, her mind whirred to a standstill as recognition blossomed in the forefront of her mind.

The one she'd looked at for years was long disparate from its original state.

Scrambling to her feet, she skittered out to the living room, to unpacked boxes and bins and rifled through them for the one labeled _keepsakes_. With the black Louboutin under her arm she delved through it, barely able to breathe when she unearthed the other half of the pair.

Holding them side by side in front of her, she vaguely recognized that she was crying, swallowing large gulps of air in the middle of his, their, living room.

Hers was scuffed, the four-inch heel broken beyond repair, the inside water damaged and she hadn't been sure why she'd kept it in the bottom of a box for six years, except perhaps because throwing it away would be like closing the door, too final when she was still so much, so painfully, in love in love him. She never looked at it, except to remind herself of how she'd failed him, broke both of their hearts. Of her own betrayal, and stupidity. Of the life she could have lived.

His was pristine.

And then she realized she was laughing, too.

"Mac?" The door leading out to the terrace swung shut. "Mac, what's wrong?"

She felt his hand on the small of her back before feeling him come to her side; he smelled like cigarette smoke, laundry detergent, and fresh snow.

"You kept it," she said, the hand holding the broken shoe falling to her side; she held up the one he kept between them. _He kept her shoe_. Blinking rapidly, she looked up at him, the height difference more pronounced with both of them barefoot. "Will, you kept my shoe."

"I… you lost it." Color rose high on his cheeks, and one of his large hands went to the shoe at her side, folding over it and bringing it up for inspection. Face softening, he rubbed a thumb over her fingers. "What happened to this one?"

They still haven't discussed the night they fell apart.

She opened and closed her mouth around a few aborted sentences.

"I fell," she whispered. "Down the front stoop, I was always tripping down it, I hated that building, you know, and you always—"

He nodded. "I always caught you—"

She shook her head; if he spoke she'd lose it entirely, and she can already feel tears tracking down her face and she put on mascara this morning so she was sure it was wholly unattractive. "I was crying so hard and it was raining and I was obviously uneven on my feet, and I fell…"

He tucked the cuff on the sleeve of his sweatshirt over his thumb, wiping her face with it. "You kept it."

"I couldn't leave it there." She bit her lip, forcing herself to look him in the eye. His own were on the shoe, where the leather was ripped and the lining was browned and mildewed, and she gripped his chin and made him look at her. "A broken shoe was the least of what I ruined that night. I kept it to… to remind me, of everything that I… threw away." At the look that took root on his face, she blinked back a fresh wave of tears, and raised the pristine shoe. "Why did… why did _you _keep it?"

"I couldn't bring myself to get rid of it," he rasped.

"Why?" she whispered, some unnamable force pushing her a step closer to him, and they stood in the middle of their living room in the middle of their next war, in Saturday clothes and far from camera ready, but she'd always preferred them that way.

When he answered, his mouth was hovering close to hers. "Because I never stopped loving you."

"Physical law of the universe," she laughed, eyes crinkling. More tears spilled but she was far from caring; he was crying too, that half-desperate, earnest expression he wore when he'd asked her to marry him back on his face.

"Something like that," he muttered, nodding and silencing her with a kiss.

His hands slid into her hair, both shoes clattering to the floor.

* * *

**viii. **

"So tell me, Cinderella," he said, after they'd kissed and kissed and kissed. He climbed down off the sofa they had lowered themselves to and she sat up, a look of confusion crossing her face.

"Your knees," she protested, but he waved her away, reaching back to grab the shoe that had sat, waiting, for six years in his closet.

He'd tell her later how he'd look at it, waiting for her, and after that, waiting for himself. About how he had tried to harden his heart into glass, but she had come back and made him bold and daring and brave anyway.

She _was_ his heart after all, even when he was pretending he didn't have one at all—it was less painful, that way. Or so he'd thought.

Kneeling, he lifted one of her feet onto his thigh, sliding off her ridiculous patterned fleece sock. She had stilled, palms braced on the soft leather of his, their, couch, watching him with a growing smile on her face, tears hemmed into soft brown eyes. "Billy?"

"What do you think, Mac?" he asked, feeling his own voice strain again with emotion. Palming the shoe so that it was aligned with her foot, he stroked her legging-clad calf with his other hand. "Think it'll still fit?"

She giggled, wiping at her eyes.

"Let's find out."

* * *

**ix. **

It did.

"I think this makes Charlie our fairy godmother," she murmured, sliding down off the couch and sliding her arms over his shoulders, pressing him down onto the rug with one black Louboutin firmly placed upon her foot.

His answering laugh was a puff of breath against her lips. "Don't tell him that, he's still gloating."

* * *

**x. **

They lived. Not always happily, but always together, which was the important part after all.

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**Thanks for reading!**


End file.
